A Red Dress
by Zwip
Summary: In which there is exorcism and drunken revelry. DouWata
1. A Red Dress

**Fandom:** xxxHolic  
**Characters:** Doumeki Shizuka, Watanuki Kimihiro, Ichihara Yuuko**  
****Warnings/Ratings:** None.  
**In A Nutshell:** "Maybe if you actually talked you would be mocking me for the rest of my life!"  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own xxHolic.

A red, slinky dress lay behind a thick wardrobe door, waiting to be used, knowing with what little magic it held that today was its day.

Yuuko could have worn it, but the pale hands that grasped the fabric roughly were not hers. Instead, they belonged to her chagrin-drowned, indentured servant, Watanuki Kimihiro, who, despite his somewhat effeminate appearance, did not appreciate having to wear the garment.

"I couldn't have at least had black?"

"This ghost has an affinity for flashiness."

"Why can't we just exorcise her?"

"Don't you think that's rather rude? Besides, she has a wish, she just won't say so."

"How do you know that?"

"I sincerely hope you're not questioning my power."

"Well, no. Why doesn't Doumeki have to wear a dress?"

"He's already had his share of wearing girls' clothing."

"And that wouldn't make it a better job for him?"

"I'm afraid not, Watanuki-kun. Not to mention I'll be taking a snippet extra off of your debts for this particular mission."

"Alright, alright! I'll do it."

Moments later, the bespectacled teen returned, looking stunning in the sleek, red number.

"My, my. You look so very… flat."

"THAT'S HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE! I'M NOT A GIRL, AFTER ALL!"

"No, I suppose not. I do have something that might help with your figure, though."

"I refuse."

"It will chip a great deal off your debt…"

"I _can't_."

"I'm flattered you'd like to stay with me for such a long time, Watanuki-kun…"

"FINE. HAND IT OVER, THEN."

"I knew we'd come to an understanding sooner or later!"

By the time Watanuki emerged after his final transformation, Doumeki was waiting by the gate. The unhappy cross-dresser snatched up the pair of scarlet, strappy heels Yuuko had left by the door for him, carrying them and choosing to walk barefoot.

They followed the butterfly for some time in total silence, which the archer found pleasant and the seer found suspicious.

"Well?" The loud teen snapped.

"Hn?"

"Aren't you going to _say_ something?"

"About?"

"About this stupid outfit?! With how negative you are, I'm surprised you're not ridiculing me already! Maybe if you actually talked you would be mocking me for the rest of my life!"

"I'm not here to make fun of your clothing choices."

"It wasn't a choice! Yuuko _made_ me!"

"Hn."

"She said it would make things easier."

"We're here." The handkerchief fell limp into Doumeki's hand. They approached the house as silently as possible, but apparently not silently enough; the great, heavy doors heaved open with a creak and the illusion of a sigh.

Doumeki walked up to the entrance, only to be jerked backwards by a slender, pale hand on his collar.

"What do you think you're _doing_?" His companion hissed.

"Going in." The answer was simple enough.

"This has 'trap' written all over it; are you insane?"

"No." The archer stepped past the threshold to be met with what felt like millions of tendrils of resistance, pressing feebly against his entire body. As Watanuki scurried in behind him, the resistance stopped, and the doors slammed shut with an unpleasantly resounding thud that the spastic teen couldn't help but liken to a body being thrown a great distance.

"Let's see… we're supposed to wait under the chandelier, aren't we?"

"Yes."

The now-bored Watanuki sat down on the floor, only to be yanked up firmly by his personal (and highly begrudged) savior.

"What? I can't sit now?"

"The floor's dusty."

"You've clearly never been in Yuuko's storage room if you think that dust will worry-"

"You'll dirty the dress."

"Right, right, the dress." Suddenly his body snapped into a rigid line, his eyelids fluttering closed. He was falling over backwards when Doumeki decided it would be the proper sort of thing to do to catch him.

"Hello?" The voice emanating from the dress-clad teen's mouth seemed disembodied and unreal.

And highly… female.

The archer could barely resist laughing.

"Um… h-hi. I-I'm sorry, but… I'm a little nervous around m-men."

The stoic archer blinked, absolute howling with mirth inwardly.

"I… I have a wish."

"Come with me." He grabbed his… her? Hand and lead her out of the house, the doors giving way surprisingly easily under his hands. Yuuko was waiting in the front lawn, as expected.

"She's here."

"And so she is! Don't worry, Doumeki-kun, Watanuki-kun will be all back to normal soon enough!" The archer nodded; if he couldn't trust the most powerful magic user in the worlds, he couldn't trust anyone.

"She can't leave the property, however. She's still bound to her old home."

"Hn."

"Take care of her; you'll get your reward. Also, don't forget to collect her payment."

"Hn." Yuuko waved her hands dismissively and Doumeki pulled the doors shut again.

"So you have a wish."

"Y-Yes."

"I'm here to help."

"Ah, thank you, but… I don't think you can."

"Why not?"

"Because… my wish was to…" She flushed, holding her face. He waited patiently. "I've always wanted… well, I never had…" when she saw that Doumeki wouldn't help her along or tell her not to finish if she couldn't, she continued, "I never had a first love."

"Hn."

"I was always so sick; mama never let me leave the house very much. There was one boy, but…"

"But?"

"Well, there was one boy… I snuck out once, but I got lost. He tried to help me find my way home, but we couldn't, so we had to find a police officer instead. After he walked me home, he said he'd visit me again." She looked down. "He never did. I saw him running around sometimes, like he was being followed by some invisible monster, maybe. But he never ran to me."

The archer was beginning to think that this sounded like someone he was very familiar with. He looked around for something reflective, finding a dusty mirror and setting tit down in front of her.

"It's… it's him!" She hugged the mirror to her chest.

"It's you."

"Ah, so… I'm in his body?"

"Yes."

"Ah, this is… strange. It explains why it feels so… different."

"Is it good enough?"

He gestured to the girl possessing his friend's body. "To grant your wish?"

"I'd… prefer to see him, not me in his body."

"Hm."

"But I think to make up for it…" She tapped her chin for a moment, then blushed slightly and stammered, "W-would you… give me my first kiss?" Doumeki's eyebrows arched nearly imperceptibly, a tribute to his very small range of facial expression.

"I'm sorry. I can't do that."

"Why not?" She began to cry.

"It's his body."

"Ah, but he's dressed in girls' clothing, could you just pretend he's…"

That wasn't the problem at all.

He wouldn't want it."

"You know," she said, looking up at him," I can feel it. There's a lot of _something_ in here. An urge to reach out to you, but I'm afraid I'm unsure of whether or not it's to harm or to hold." She giggled. "Probably both."

"I can't."

"Ah, but… I have no other wishes… I was thinking that with this, I might be able to leave… I think mama's waiting for me out there, and it's just been so… lonely here, without her." Tears were glistening in those blue eyes, Watanuki's eyes, and Doumeki couldn't help but feel affected. "I can't stand being alone."

That did it.

Doumeki bent over, unhesitating, and kissed her. It was a tidy thing, no more than a glorified peck on the lips, to be sire, but when he pulled away, she looked dazed.

"Thank you, that was…" She grinned, unable to think of anything. He nodded, no somewhat regretting the choice but being grateful that Watanuki would not remember it. "I'm… going to go now." He patted her once on the head and she swooned. He sat down next to what was now Watanuki's body, remarking on the little likeliness of its animation any time soon.

The archer then stood to find what was the real supernatural being here.

…

Watanuki woke up in a dark, unknown building, wearing a silky red dress that was hiked up to his thighs and an unpleasantly-padded bra. Overall, it was not a comforting situation. Remembering only passing out and noticing that Doumeki was nowhere in his immediate vicinity, he cursed the archer and set out to find him.

To add to the oddity of his predicament, the house seemed a lot larger on the inside than they'd first assumed. There was a creak here and there, but Watanuki thought it all-the-worse that it was mostly silent. The stillness was thick and oppressive, nearly choking him in its miserable atmosphere. He heard some scuffling and a thump from the hallway to his right, hurrying over as fast as he could.

Doumeki was lying on the floor, victim of red string tied across the bottom of a doorframe. The thought of his stoic protector tripping made him laugh heartily until he realized that the tripped teen was not moving to rise.

"HEY. YOU LAZY LOUT. GET UP." He dropped to his knees and shook him. "YOU ONLY TRIPPED, YOU KNOW."

No response.

"DOUMEKI, YOU NEED TO GET UP NOW." A little more frantic." "IF YOU DON'T WAKE UP I SWEAR I WON'T MAKE YOU LUNCH, YOU KNOW." A choked, aborted noise escaped his throat.

Something in the darkness growled. Watanuki, having lived a long enough life unpleasantly filled with somethings growling at him in the darkness, decided that tonight might be the last.

"Doumeki, you need to wake up. You need to wake up right now." The click of the thing's talons against the wooden floor was slow, in cast contrast with the accelerated beating of the doomed adolescent's heart. "Doumeki, I can't do CPR that well." He glanced in the direction of the thing, still clicking away gleefully, tilted the archer's head, pinched his nose, and pressed his lips to the other's pair, blowing.

Doumeki's eyes shot open, his lungs flooded with pre-used air. He quickly registered that Watanuki was above his, lifting his head to start compressions. The archer pushed his hands away from his chest, sitting up and jumping into action after seeing the thing through Watanuki's tear-filled eye. Watanuki, insanely relieved, ended up letting the vision go out.

"Oi. If you don't guide me, I can't kill it." The blue-eyed teen pointed at the monster, noting that these things began to seem a lot more ridiculous-looking now that the edge of danger was rubbed off. Spirit exorcised, damsel and

day saved, Doumeki sat on the floor, waiting for a rant.

"What were you doing?! Why'd you leave me alone like that?!"

"I had a guess."

"Oh really? One that nearly got us killed?!"

"It made her sick."

"What?"

"The spirit. It was making her sick."

"Oh..."

"It was better to get rid of it."

"I guess so."

"You need to check someone's pulse before you give them CPR. You could kill a person that way."

"WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? I THOUGHT YOU WERE…" He let his screech trail off.

"Hn."

Watanuki used his skills and poor timing to step on a shard of glass.

"OW! HEY, IS THAT SERIOUSLY THE ONLY GLASS SHARD IN THIS WHOLE CURSED HOUSE? REALLY? _REALLY?_"

Doumeki shut him up by lifting him onto his back.

"Hey! You! Won't you listen to me when I'm talking to you?" He settled for mumbling halfhearted plots for revenge as the archer entered the foyer, minding to sweep up Watanuki's red high heels before padding out the front door, closing it behind them and trotting still into the brisk November evening. The moon was so bright that it nearly seemed to be daytime, bathing everything in its cobalt light.

Doumeki arrived at Yuuko's shop no short time later, still toting the dress-wearing teen on his back and assuring himself mentally that he had in no way ogled the way the red silk had slid farther and farther up his companion's thigh. It was probably the witch's fault, anyway.

"Ah, Doumeki-kun! So reliable and kind! I trust you received your payment?" He nodded. "And mine?" He retrieved the silver locket he'd tripped and nearly died to get from his pocket, dropping it into her outstretched hand neatly. "Perfect! I can always count on you!" She tapped his nose lightly with the end of her pipe, smoke billowing from it like the tail of a slinky, gray fox. A pipe fox, maybe.

"Would you like to stay for a drink?" Yuuko propositioned, brandishing something called tequila. "I've heard this stuff is pretty good." She narrowed her eyes. "I might even be charitable and count it as part of your payment, since you didn't really get to kiss _him_."

Doumeki just followed her into the eclectic-looking house.

* * *

Something light-hearted, loosely based upon three random words allotted to me by my dear Saku.


	2. Cigarettes

**Fandom:** xxxHolic  
**Characters:** Doumeki Shizuka, Watanuki Kimihiro, Ichihara Yuuko**  
****Warnings/Ratings:** None.  
**In A Nutshell:** "Maybe if you actually talked you would be mocking me for the rest of my life!"  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own xxHolic.

It was not a big deal, Doumeki decided. Just a kiss.

Well, just a little more.

A few kisses.

And some grinding.

Well, a lot of grinding.

But not too much.

It was very pleasant, to say the least.

But Doumeki knew that even if it was just a little but, it wasn't something he should be thinking about during an archery competition. Especially not during an archery competition against their rivals that rested entirely on his shoulders in these final moments.

Of course it was a perfect hit, regardless of Watanuki's past distractions and even present ones. The teen was sitting in the stands, very distinctly _not_ cheering next to Kunogi, who was. There was the faintest hint of rose color on his cheeks, something he'd deny or blame on a cold if questioned about it.

Doumeki knew he must be thinking about it, too, and threw him a smirk, sending him into a rage as the sunflower giggled. The archer made a mental note to save the fletching for later.

…

Doumeki rang the doorbell to Watanuki's apartment, not nervous at all. Watanuki opened the door to see his face and immediately tried to slam it closed, but the archer stopped it. They stared at each other for a moment.

"Well, if you came here, you might as well come in!"

"You're in the way." Grumbling, Watanuki moved out of the way as the archer slipped in and slid his shoes off.

"Sit down! And be quiet! I've got homework and cooking and cleaning to do, I don't even know why you'd come here today, it would have been better if you'd just come on a weekend, what are you still doing here? Haven't I made it clear enough that I'm going to be busy aaaall day and won't have time to talk to you or look at you or think about you or even breathe the same air as you?"

Doumeki said nothing. The orphaned teen sighed, and the archer could see he was tired, the soft skin under his eyes lavender and his statements not even reaching half volume, coming out only half-heartedly without his usual, pissy conviction. He kind of missed it.

"Oh, isn't that funny, you want to talk about it, of course when I don't want to talk about it you're going to become the emperor of verbosity, really great, I _really _appreciate that." He sat down at the table, picking up a pen and scribbling angrily at a piece of paper, pressing down so hard he nearly ripped a hole in it.

"You liked it," Doumeki noted.

"I was also _drunk_."

"_You_ sat in my lap."

"I was also… _drunk_! And it was an accident, anyway!"

"You were the one who started rocking-"

"ENOUGH! WOULD YOU PLEASE GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT BEFORE I AM TEMPTED TO CAUSE YOU BODILY HARM?" Watanuki raised a slender hand threateningly. Doumeki shook his head solemnly, grabbing the other teen's wrist and invading his personal space.

"Would you like to try it sober?"

"NO, NO, I'M FINE GO AWAY GO AWAY. NOW LET GO." Instead, Doumeki slid his hand up, threading his fingers through Watanuki's loosely.

"_I_ would like to." He leaned in.

"HEY. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU, YOU KNOW."

"I know, that's why I'll make it pleasant for you."

"NO, IT CAN'T BE PLEASANT FOR ME IF IT'S YOU." Doumeki decided that now would be the best time to kiss him to shut up. He smashed their faces together unpleasantly, Watanuki nearly passing out from shock. The protector lingered for a moment and pulled away, completely satisfied. The protected sputtered. Needless to say, it was a disaster. The spirit-plagued teen sunk down to the floor in a stupor, the archer leaving deftly through window. He would have time to try kissing Watanuki again, because he would save him from every ridiculous, creepy, crawling thing out there.

* * *

I believe there is to be a third but I have not decided yet whether or not I like it.


End file.
